New user! trying to read external hard drive.

[Rowan1980]

Hello all,

I'm a very new user to Linux and have some programming experience (A long time ago!) and made the decision to move to Linux. I'm currently running Linux Mint 7 Gloria. I transferred all of my backup media files to an external hard drive but now cannot 'see' them to transfer them back across.

I've searched for this problem but haven't found anything that relates directly to my issue. the External hard drive system is NTFS which I was sure would be viewable from within this distro.

Any help massively appreciated!

[Hal343]

Install ntfs3-g to read the drive.
If the drive still can't be seen, check to see if the OS can see it.
Open a terminal:
For USB drive
[code] lsusb
From there it depends if it is visible or not. You may have to post the results of that command back here if you don't understand it.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

ntfs-3g package is pre-installed in most distros.
Plug-in your External drive, open Terminal and execute this

sudo fdisk -l
df -h

Post output here.

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[Rubberman]

The system probably sees it, but generally Linux will not auto-mount an ntfs volume like it will a vfat one, at least not yet. However, on my system(s), an icon (unmounted) for the device does appear on the desktop. You are using a desktop GUI, correct? To mount it, you need to be root, or mount it with the sudo command. I mount ntfs volumes all the time on my CentOS/RHEL system, using the ntfs-3g drivers.